Also, unlike PC Paintbrush, when the initial release of Dr. Halo is first started it displays the last saved drawing along with its associated color and pattern palettes.

Dr. Halo II also added undoing, graphics scaling, and a "smart eraser" tool that allows users to selectively replace a certain color used in a drawing.

In reality, it, like Dr. Halo II, was a raster editor that shared the former's ability to import text files while holding more sophisticated editing tools, as observed by InfoWorld, and making use of extended memory.

[10] Curt Suplee of The Washington Post praised version 3.0, writing "Even if you've never drawn so much as a glass of water, [Dr. Halo III] can put you in the picture.

"[11] InfoWorld writer Ken Milburn called the same version a "[g]ood midrange package" with its user interface "the best we encountered" in the magazine's survey of DOS-based graphics editors released at the time.

[12] Galen Gruman and Andre Kvitka of the same publication were more tempered with their praise, writing that Dr. Halo III had "powerful" graphics creation and editing abilities but was "difficult to learn because of its unintuitive interface.